Rerouted is an upcoming first-person survival game that drops you and up to three friends into a huge northern wilderness with one simple objective: find your way home alive.
Developed and published by Tooman, the game mixes exploration, survival, crafting and co-op as players travel through forests, swamps, rivers and mountain passes while dealing with cold weather, hunger and dangerous wildlife.
However, one of its most interesting mechanics could make surviving with friends considerably more difficult.
Animals can hear you talking.
Rerouted features proximity voice chat that can actually be detected by wildlife. Bears, wolves and other animals will react to your presence, meaning shouting to your friends at the wrong moment could potentially attract something you really don’t want to meet.
Sometimes fighting won’t be the best option either. Players may need to stay quiet, avoid an animal’s territory and carefully move around threats rather than attempting to take everything on directly.
The entire adventure can be played alone or in online co-op with up to four players.
Working together allows the group to share supplies, protect each other and divide some of the work needed to survive, although the developer clearly seems interested in the chaos that comes from throwing several friends into the wilderness together.
Getting home won’t simply involve following a waypoint across the screen.
Rerouted does away with GPS-style navigation and instead expects players to use a physical map, compass and surrounding landmarks to work out where they are and where they need to go.
You’ll have to recognise terrain and plan routes through forests, mountains, rivers and swamps rather than blindly following an objective marker.
Surviving the journey will also require players to live off the land.
You can hunt animals, catch fish, forage for useful resources and cook food over an open fire. Materials found while exploring can also be used to craft tools and other equipment needed to continue deeper into the wilderness.
Camping plays another major role.
Players can establish camps during the journey and gradually improve their shelters, giving the group somewhere to escape the cold, prepare food and recover before continuing towards home.
That makes Rerouted slightly different from survival games built around creating one enormous permanent base. Your ultimate objective is to keep moving, with camps functioning as places to prepare for the next stage of the journey.
The environment itself appears to be one of the game’s biggest challenges.
You’re stranded far from civilisation in an unforgiving northern landscape, and the wilderness isn’t presented as an empty playground. Animals defend their territory and react to what players are doing around them.
That combination could lead to some particularly chaotic co-op moments. A group could carefully avoid a nearby bear only for one player to start talking over proximity chat and give away everyone’s position.
Steam currently lists Rerouted as an Adventure and Indie title, while popular user tags include Survival, Co-op, Exploration, Open World, Multiplayer, Sandbox, First-Person and Crafting.
Both single-player and online co-op are officially supported.
Rerouted currently has no confirmed release date and remains listed as “Coming Soon” on Steam.
With four-player co-op, manual navigation, hunting, fishing, camp building and wildlife capable of hearing what you’re saying, Rerouted could be an interesting addition to the growing number of co-op survival games arriving on PC.
Just remember to keep your voice down when there’s a bear nearby.